Untroubled Waters

Spending most of her career teaching high school English history, Frances Gearhart had summers free to visit her vacation home at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernadino mountains, just 90 miles from her Pasadena home. That’s undoubtedly the spot depicted in Untroubled Waters, one of her most famous prints. Gearhart first printed the lighter woodblocks, including the pinkish rock forms, dusty blue outlines, and pale blue lake. Then she added a dramatic black screen of pine trees, creating the illusion that we have suddenly come upon a hidden idyll that few are privileged to see. She was unique among California color block printmakers, who had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Her thick oil paints and emphasis on the “key block, ” the darkly inked block that carries the outlines, produced a sense of majesty and depth rarely equaled in American printmaking.